In Arabic script a dot denotes the numeral zero, a convention derived from the earlier use of the dot in the Devanagari script of South Asia. The Bakhshali manuscript, written in an early form of Devanagari script, has been newly dated to the 3rd or 4th century CE. Now in the Boolean Library at Oxford University, the manuscript was originally discovered near modern Peshawar, Pakistan, and is the oldest existing document using the dot to denote zero. This is not the oldest known use of zero. The ancient Babylonians had their own symbol in the cuneiform writing system.Read More

There comes that moment when you’ve done the prudent planning, and yet still, enter that place Rumi says “from now on I’ll be mad.” Mad not as in angry, but as in irrational. We have water, candles, flashlights, food. Took down the precarious tree, put up sandbags . . . in Florida, awaiting Hurricane Irma.Read More

Satya सत्य Sanskrit for truth, for the virtue of being truthful in thought, speech and action; One of the five yamas, the virtuous restraint from falsehood and distortion of reality in one’s expressions and actions. Calligraphy by Stewart J. ThomasRead More

Atmabandhu “Soulmate” Sanskrit in Devanagari calligraphy, paper mounted on board with gold wash, by Stewart J. Thomas. This piece was just accepted to the juried exhibition “Calligraphies in Conversation” curated by the Ziya Art Center and will be exhibited this fall at the San Francisco Public Library in California.Read More